Grace Potter Preps for Lollapalooza, Cartoon Series Debut

Grace Potter

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Folk-rock singer Grace Potter has written a Christmas song, "Naughty, Naughty Children," and will lend her voice talents to a character on Prep & Landing, an upcoming Disney special to air on ABC around the holidays.

"I don’t want to excite people too much because I literally don’t say a word, I make noises," Potter tells Rolling Stone. "Actually, it’s the best way to become a cartoon voice ever because I didn’t have to nail my lines or worry about diction. My character mumbles and makes noises with her mouth – which is kind of awesome."

Her voice will be much clearer though on "Naughty, Naughty Children," her first ever Christmas song. The song keeps with the theme of the special. "This series is called 'Naughty Or Nice,' that’s sort of the theme of the whole series," Potter says of the special. "So you can imagine how much fun I had with that theme."

She listened to a lot of Chuck Berry's music as she started writing. "I really love what Chuck Berry did with Christmas music, and also the Rat Pack Christmas stuff, which I listened to all through my childhood," she says. "My Uncle Morgan every year would make a Christmas mix tape and he would find just the most inappropriate weird shit, like Dean Martin with a cocktail in hand and a bunch of dogs barking 'Jingle Bells.' So I’ve taken that sort of cheeky aspect of Christmas music and I’ve put it into this sort of Chuck Berry 'Run, Run Rudolph' kind of approach."

The singer will have more firsts when she hits Chicago in two weeks for her Lollapalooza premiere. "Last summer as this record [2010's Grace Potter and the Nocturnals] started gaining steam the calls started pouring in from festivals that normally we didn’t think we fit into. Lollapalooza’s definitely a new and exciting crossover audience for us."

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